Question: Being sensitive to beauty, how can one avoid being upset by others' ugliness?

Sri Chinmoy: You are sensitive to beauty, but becoming upset when you notice ugliness all around you does not help you increase your sense of beauty or your capacity to appreciate beauty. So you have to become wise. If there is light somewhere, you try to increase this light to more light, abundant light, infinite Light. But if you see darkness somewhere, you don't do this. Your goal, let us say, is to the north, not to the south. If you look towards the south, you see that it is all flooded with darkness. So do not look in that direction. You will not even look at it. Inside yourself you want beauty and light; but this moment you look at beauty and see it in an infinitesimal measure, and the next moment you look at ugliness and see a flood of ugliness. This is wrong. Once you see beauty at a particular place, either inside yourself or around you, try to focus your attention on that particular place. When you focus your attention on the place where you have seen beauty, your appreciation of this beauty will increase. But if you see ugliness and become upset, you will not be able to focus your attention on the things that you want to see. Although your present is not flooded with light, although you cannot quite see the Goal, you know the road. The road that leads to infinite Light you have seen. So you will not consciously and deliberately take the road that leads to infinite darkness.